


Illogical Things

by Needle_Bones



Category: The Venture Bros
Genre: Gen, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-16
Updated: 2015-06-16
Packaged: 2018-04-04 18:27:22
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,894
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4148283
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Needle_Bones/pseuds/Needle_Bones
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I tried to avoid actually shipping these two in any way, shape, or form but their relationship is just too great, no matter how you read it. So here’s a kind of shippy thing with an injured White and a worried Billy, I guess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Illogical Things

Billy hated illogical things. When things made sense, there was nothing to worry about, nothing to plan for. Logic flowed neatly, one thing to the next. Logic… was not this.

It had been four hours, total.

Two hours of near-panic, watching the sun flooding the world with warm light and wondering if he’d hate the sight of it from today on, followed by two hours of pacing the waiting room, listening to medical chatter he could follow far too easily, and wincing whenever a new bruise or scrape decided to make itself known.

Two hours of forcing down the memory of White’s quiet, pained breaths and the way he curled in on himself once the ropes were cut. All those ugly lines wrapped around his wrists, preserving the the natural stark white of his skin - the imprint of something protecting him and killing him all at once.

Billy had a good idea of who was behind it all and God help St Cloud if he ever got his hands on him after this. There weren’t many villains who would go so far as to tie a man with severe albinism in direct sunlight for hours on end and St Cloud was about the only one Billy knew of who fit the profile, especially after pulling the same damn stunt before in Greece.

Illogical, all of it. Why now? Why like that? Why him?

Granted, it was grade-A villain work. Abducting the most important man in Billy’s life had certainly been a wake up call. As organized as the Guild was, they weren’t known for coming down too hard on murders, and that was what had him on edge more than anything else he could stand thinking about just then. If he focused on the anger instead of the fear, he was safe. If he was angry, not afraid, he could keep moving.

By then, the Quizboy had all but glued himself to the chair near the end of the hall, staring at the clock across from him with an intensity that likely scared the nurses as they moved back and forth, to and from their station. This was taking too long.

Everything from about 6:30 that morning until then was nothing but an anxiety-riddled blur. He dimly remembered calling White’s phone near sunrise when the man still hadn’t returned. When he got no answer, Billy had gone to the Venture Compound, thinking White might have holed up there for whatever reason he’d gotten in his head. No luck. By then, he was starting to panic, just the slightest bit. True, White almost never talked if he could text, but Billy hadn’t gotten any messages from him either.

Well, until just before sunrise. Just a few minutes to go and his phone began working its way across the cluttered table to him. He’d grabbed it, expecting White to be only slightly coherent and wanting a ride home.

He still had that picture - couldn’t bring himself to delete it - complete with the short message ‘Lose something, Quizboy?’

Everything started running together around then, and he couldn’t remember much between then and now. At least, not clearly. All he knew was that it was almost 8 in the morning before they’d found White, tied to the burning sand, and remembering that made him want to curl up under that plastic chair and cry until he wound up dehydrated.

“Mr. Whalen?”

Billy looked up. A young doctor, he realized when his mind caught up. Serious but not somber. That was a good sign.

“Is he all right?” Billy asked, the words spilling out as he stood.

“The burns are very severe. There’s some rather bad blistering along his left side and I’m a bit concerned about what if any damage might have been done to his eyes,” the doctor said, and Billy cringed as the knot in his stomach pulled tighter, “We have him on medication to knock the fever down, and he should pull through just fine. Of course, we’ll have to keep him here for a while. His vitals are still a little weaker than we’d like, but he’s stable.”

“Can I see him?” Billy had asked without thinking and now, standing just inside the closed door of that darkened room, he wondered if this was such a good idea. The air was close and cold and the soft, steady beeping of the various monitors was slowly fraying his nerves down to the last red thread. He’d spent a lot of his adult life in hospitals, or at least in similar surroundings, but this… this was just… wrong, wasn’t it?

“Hey, Billy.” Low. Raspy. Tired.

“White.” Breathe. Walk. “You sound like hell.” 

It was true. Billy doubted White would sound much different if he stayed awake for 72 hours straight and then downed a gallon of sand and broken glass. He stood at the bedside for a minute or so, pressing his hands to the thin sheets, hoping it would ground him just a little. It didn’t help him much when White tried to smile - not the fake, TV host smile he always had during ‘Quizboys’, but his real one, just a little crooked and endearing even now - while Billy climbed up into a chair beside the bed. He wound up sitting on his legs to see him better.

Most of White’s skin was stained a deep, ugly red and streaked with small blisters save for a small section around his wrists and ankles. It was the worst along his left side. He must have kept his head turned most of the time he was trapped out there since the burns didn’t look to be as severe around his face, where his hair would have fallen. That was something to be grateful for, at least.

As awful as he looked just then, the burns and blisters weren’t what concerned Billy the most. A lack of pigment in the skin meant White had no natural protection against things like this. He was always careful, sure, but sometimes Billy forgot that light really could kill the man, and easily too if the right conditions were met. His skin cancer risk was probably through the roof now…

He must have looked sick because White shifted to set his fingertips on the back of Billy’s left hand. Just a small, comforting gesture. Just enough to break the last string.

Billy didn’t look at him or even acknowledge that he’d been touched. Instead he just put his head down on his arms, closing his eyes. The scent of antiseptic stung his nose and burned into the back of his throat. He had no right to cry about this. White was the one who had been through hell - what had Billy done? Run around like a chicken with his head cut off before going to round up the Venture family, mostly. The thought of White out there, wrenching at his restraints in a panic, bruising his wrists against the ropes, nearly dislocating his shoulder (which Billy would find out about later and which would start him crying over the whole affair again)… It was just too much to process. Billy just felt cold now. He was prone to shutting down when he was younger but he’d mistakenly thought he’d grown out of it by then.

White’s hand was in his hair then, ruffling it. He was probably on a cocktail of painkillers by then and just happy to have a visitor, but the touch was enough to bring Billy back to the room. “You really saved me back there, little guy,” he said, his voice clearing just a bit.

“Oh, please.” Billy picked his head up, trying to glare through the tears and being pretty sure he didn’t manage it. “I showed up two fucking hours late - ”

“But you still showed up. And with the entire Venture family. Who else would’a done that for me?”

No one, Billy thought, but of course he didn’t voice it. Neither of them really had anyone else willing to do such stupid, reckless, dangerous shit just for them. Well, Billy’s mother would move heaven and earth for him - and Billy suspected for White, too - but aside from her, there was no one they could really count on when things got bad.

And White… White was fussy and lazy and capricious to a fault. And no one but Billy could have possibly put up with him for as long as he had.

“Just you,” White said as if he’d read his mind.

Silence then. Billy clenched his teeth, stared hard at his hands, and tried not to notice White gently running those long, tapered fingers through his hair. It really made no logical sense, their relationship. By all rights, they should hate each other. First, White had caused Billy enough trauma to fill a best-selling tell-all, and now Billy’s archenemy had put the man in the hospital. Hell, he’d almost put him in the morgue.

Or maybe that just made them even. Who knew anymore? Billy had had trouble defining what they were to each other pretty much since the first day they met. This wasn’t exactly unfamiliar territory.

“I don’t know what I’d do without you, Billy.”

He almost didn’t hear him. He almost wrote it off as an effect of the painkillers, stress, and exhaustion. And then he made the mistake of looking at him.

White’s eyes were clear, like they always were when he was deeply serious. He was tired - absolutely exhausted - underneath it all, but he was staying awake because this mattered to him. Because Billy mattered to him.

The Quizboy swallowed hard, mostly so he didn’t say something stupid on impulse. “Get some rest, okay?” he said, reaching up to gently remove White’s hand from his hair, careful of the burned skin. “We can talk when you’re not so loopy from the painkillers.”

White let him move his hand back to the thin mattress but made a small reaching motion for Billy’s other hand, the one that was still flesh and blood. He didn’t get very far, only managing to barely snag Billy’s first two fingers, but the contact was comforting to the both of them. Billy didn’t move to get away or take his hand back even after White fell asleep, looking small and fragile in that big hospital bed, with his hair spread out like snow across the pillow and a steady numbing cocktail being pulsed through that thin, coiling tube and into his veins.

This was far from over. But White was safe for the moment. Stable and in a good hospital. And it was only then that Billy let himself realize how terrified he was, how sick he’d felt as the minutes bled by like water through gauze, and how wrong the world had seemed until now, until he knew it was over, even just for the moment. He’d always known that White mattered to him. Rather, they mattered to each other. Deeply, and in a way he could never quite pin down. Quite simply, he hadn’t expected this.

Billy sat there beside him until his legs started to ache, looking down at their linked hands. Just the pads of their first two fingers… like a Vulcan kiss, he realized with a faint smile.

Billy had never liked illogical things, but he just might love Peter White.


End file.
